Talk:Doha Development Round/Archives/2013

Intro

South Korea is a fully developed country, but the intro makes it sound like it's a developing country. "the major developing countries led and represented mainly by Brazil, China, India, South Korea, and South Africa"

Resources for future edits

Article needs a current event tag and stuff from this http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage_c_online.php?leftnm=11&bKeyFlag=IN&autono=20445 page. Decided not to write it myself, as I really have a major bias on all of this. TaylorSAllen 03:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

doha section/china

i don't think this sentence in the doha subsection - "In December 2001, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (referred to by China as Taiwan - Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu) were admitted to the WTO." is relevant. many countries are admitted into the wto and this has little if nothing to do with the doha round. todddc

In response to this comment, I think it is important to realise how crucial China's introduction to the WTO is for developing countries. China is a massive power in terms of the world economy, and as such carries more weight in negotiations than a lot of smaller developing countries. At the same time, it shares many of the concerns of other, smaller developing countries such as EU agricultural subsidies and textile import quotas. Thus, China entering the WTO does have important implications in terms of how the Doha round is negotiated, and should therefore feature in this article. 84.70.42.145 22:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

agriculture disagreements

The article currently says:

Agricultural protectionism, especially with regards to US and to a lesser extent Europe's Common Agricultural Policy, is the most significant issue upon which agreement has been hardest to negotiate.

This sentence indicates that the US is the primary stumbling block on this issue, but I was under the impression that the US had actually offered to scrap all subsidies if Europe would agree to do likewise, but Europe refused. In any case, as the parties are now all blaming each other, it's probably better for us to simply say who's blaming who, and not try to come up with our own view until some reliable third-party analyses are available. --Delirium 11:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes --anskas 13:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

This article seems a bit one-sided in the favour of the WTO, several NGOs have been critical of the talks, and have suggested that they were of little benefit to developing countries.

See War on Want: http://www.waronwant.org/?lid=12741

And the World Development Movement: http://www.wdm.org.uk/news/presrel/current/tradetalkscollapse24072006.htm

Commenting on the reported collapse, Peter Hardstaff, Head of Policy at the World Development Movement said; “Ever since the start of this so-called development round, the EU and USA have consistently opposed, sidelined and ignored a string of development friendly proposals made by poor countries. After the WTO’s Hong Kong Ministerial Conference it was clear that there would not be a development outcome. In that context, the collapse of the talks is positive.”

more info is available on both websites.

I do agree that these articles lack criticism against WTO - it's quite a factual and minimal timeline of events with little reference to parties subjective opinions - and should probably kept that way. Instead I suggest a subsection (Criticism against Doha rounds) with links to wiki pages of various NGOs. And on a periferal note, I may not always agree to the outcomes of the talks, but I can't really see the rationale of how stopping talkING would help the developing countries. Trust fund kids would do a lot more good if they stayed at home writing emails to their congressmen/daddies instead of obstructing the only democratic instrument there is towards fair trade

I work for War on Want and while I agree that the page should be kept factual (there are far too many detailed and subjective arguments to go into there), I don't agree with the snide comments about trust fund kids. As far as we are concerned the WTO is not a democratic instrument (amongst many other examples, ref the 'green rooms' where invited players make the real deals and everyone else including journalists or poor country governments are kept out). In its current set up, it is unable to create 'fair trade' as it is dominated by inflexible 'free trade' ideologies. Further, the point is that the political pressure created by the collapse of the round is more effective in progressing towards a pro-poor outcome than any democratic lobbying to your government who listen to professional lobbyists far more. If you are from the USA, you must surely acknowledge that! On a peripheral note, I don't see how welcoming the collapse of the round is 'obstructing' it - surely it collapses under the weight of its own contradictions and the protests of developing countries?

Special mandate

This term is used without explanation or reference. Jim 15:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

It refers to fast-track trade-negotiation authority given to the President by Congress. Our article on that is kind of a mess at the moment, though. --Delirium 16:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Introduction bias

The introduction of this article is unprofessional and cleary biased against the US. I'm going to be making some edits, but this article definitely needs more help. Cold Water 20:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I would also add India's positions, in particular:

Kamal Nath, India's trade negotiator, gave the following reasons for the collapse of the talks:

• "Developing countries cannot allow their subsistence farmers to lose their livelihood security and food security to provide market access to agricultural products from developed countries," referring to demands by rich countries to limit the use of tools by developing countries that would safeguard against floods of subsidized commodities.

• "In NAMA [non-agricultural market access negotiations] developing countries are being asked to reduce their duties to levels which would threaten their infant industries. We cannot agree to reduction of duties on industrial goods without adequate safeguards." [1]

todddc

Looking much better. todddc

I think we can remove the POV check tag now. Any objections? Cold Water 19:30, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

POV check tag removed. Cold Water 21:04, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Inappropriate Image?

Why is there a picture of the KKK burning a flag with the legend "a typical Wikimania"? It seems completely inappropriate and offensive.

Geneva 2006

The last sentence of this section 'Nevertheless great strides were made in the logical advocation of free trade, something a few decades, in not years back would have been silenced by protectionist neoconservative lobbyists.' seems to me to violate NPoV badly. That 'great strides were made' and that advocation of free trade was 'logical' are unreferenced opinions, and the remainder of the sentence should either be removed or made to refer to specific past incidents. The rest of the section isn't a bad start, should we just remove this sentence? --Tynam 12:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed it earlier. Cold Water 19:30, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Never written a word on wikipedia yet, so sorry if I am getting this wrong... Interesting article about Doha, thanks a lot! But one little thing, if you look at the Doha Development Agenda it says the negotiations were supposed to be finished by the 1st Jan 2005...

http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min01_e/mindecl_e.htm#agriculture

Even more incredible that still no end is in sight...

Thanks (felix)

Still waiting but it now looks as dead as a Doha. (;-) Bjenks (talk) 14:43, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles about the Doha round

TIMELINE: Key dates in WTO's Doha round-Reuters

FACTBOX: Subsidy issues in WTO's Doha round farm talks-Reuters

FACTBOX: Key aims of the WTO ministerial talks-Reuters

might be useful for anyone updating the article --Patrick (talk) 22:46, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Quite a useful refresher course, thanks. Personally, I think the WTO has continually fallen into language traps—some of them deliberately engineered by top-drawer US and EU trade lawyers and their media allies to obfuscate serious issues. For instance, in what way can the term "farm trade" simultaneously cover the glaringly different economics of (a) an Indian subsistence farmer tilling a few acres, (b) a French small landowner blending into a tourist landscape of grapes, livestock and chateaux and (c) the extensive export-oriented agriculture of the US or Australia, clearing and tilling millions of acres with giant machines and having no need to consider the cost of rehabilitating land for future inhabitants? What sort of 'competition' is really possible between such disparate systems? For a long time, The WTO system seemed to 'solve' such difficulties by simply translating everything to dollar values, so that the interests of the dollar-controllers would prevail. But that approach has now been seen through, and resultant failure of co-operation may now be spelling the end of the WTO. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 03:36, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, It's quite interesting that the WTO hasn't made a big push on talking about the dollar amount, nor have they publish a report on the estimated dollar growth like GATT did during the previous rounds. Thanks for the useful edits you made. --Patrick (talk) 20:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Er, the following may clarify why they stopped talking dollars—The Doha Round of multilateral trade talks has already died a thousand deaths. But, apart from the bureaucracies in Geneva, Brussels and Washington, few are grieving. . . That's because the world economy is moving forward without a World Trade Organization treaty. While Doha negotiations have sputtered on for seven years, annual global trade flows have increased 70 percent to US$14 trillion, real annual foreign direct investment is up 25 percent to US$1.5 trillion and the global economy has expanded by 30 percent to US$54.4 trillion. . . This compares with estimated benefits from full Doha Round success of US$287 billion a year. Cato Institute, 20 Jul 2008. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 14:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Improvements to GA status

Hi all. I think we can bring this article up to GA status. The biggest improvement, I think should be in the various negotiations conference. I'll be working on them, I'm currently working on the first meeting in Doha. I also wrote to the WTO to request permission to use some of their photos, which will help to improve the readability of the article. Any other suggestions? Thanks --Patrick (talk) 19:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Images would definitely make for a big improvement. Also I think the external links section can be trimmed down a bit; I don't know that there's much utility in having such an all-inclusive set of links, and I don't know if WP:GA would appreciate it. Other than that it's a strong article. -FrankTobia (talk) 00:43, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, good suggestion. --Patrick (talk) 00:51, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Another issue you might run into: criterion 5 for WP:GA is stability, that is, it does not change significantly from day to day. This might be difficult to achieve because of the "current events" nature of this round of talks. You might have to wait a week or two, depending on how events play out, for this article to pass. On the plus side we'll have enough time to find and add images. -FrankTobia (talk) 14:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, hopefully I hear back from the WTO soon. There have loads of great photos but their usage permission isn't that clear so unfortunately we have to wait to get permission before we can add the images. I'm also hoping to improve the narrative of the article, since it does jump a bit between meeting. --Patrick (talk) 15:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

What did you ask them for specifically? I ask because in order to include images on Wikipedia they need to be licensed under some form of free content license. Also notable: "non-commercial" is a no-go. One time I contacted UC Berkeley to see if I could use a picture of Hal Varian, which they wanted to allow, but I didn't ask the right question so it didn't matter. I wonder how likely it is for the WTO to start using free content licenses... -FrankTobia (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I asked them to allow their use under CC-BY-2.5. I'm somewhat surprised that many international government organizations such as the EU or UN, haven't allowed free use. There really no point in not keeping them outside free use. --Patrick (talk) 15:35, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

That is awesome; I tip my hat to you, sir. It's too bad EU and UN works aren't released into the public domain like US Federal Gov't works. I'm glad you're on the case, and I'm eager for them to get back to you. -FrankTobia (talk) 17:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

It might be useful to have a few people send an email so we build up some pressure to get them to reply. If you are up for it, their email address is publications@wto.org . Cheers --Patrick (talk) 23:59, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Good luck with getting permission. With such a big organization, it's unlikely you'll be able to get them to release all photos, but you might be able to snag one or two. If there are particular photos that you think are important, give me a link and I may be able to right up a fair use rationale. (Depending, obviously, on the photo and the article). In the mean time, there are some freely licensed photos on flickr that I can upload and add. Vickser (talk) 00:16, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Vickser. I asked permission to use just a few photos [2] [3][4]. I tried a search on flickr but didn't find that much. Thanks again --Patrick (talk) 00:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I just emailed them about the photos. Can't wait to hear back. I also blogged about this issue to a community of people who might just be moved by such a call to action, in case anyone is interested. Cross your fingers. -FrankTobia (talk) 05:14, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Ha ha that's a great post. Hopefully things will have died down this week at WTO and they respond. Thanks --Patrick (talk) 05:19, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to let you all know, but I just received an email from the WTO and we do have permission to use all their photos as long as we credit the WTO. I just need to send a follow up email to get explicit permission that it's it's under CC-BY-2.5. As soon as I do, I'll start uploading photos. Cheers --Patrick (talk) 18:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I got the same sort of response. FYI CC-BY-3.0 is the latest unported version of that license. -FrankTobia (talk) 22:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I didn't get a chance to email back. Do you mind responding? One response is good enough. Thanks! --Patrick (talk) 23:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

a more fair system of trade

"trade fairer" looked bad. I changed it to "a more fair system of trade" Any objections128.138.169.90 18:10, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Bali Package

The Bali Package isn't only Trade Facilitation, but covers Duty Free and Quote Free as well. The passage seems biased toward the positive aspects of the agreement Jonpatterns (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)